Basic English Syntax with Exercises

indefinite determiner

1.3.5.2 Determiners

In the first sentence, we introduce the main aspects of the story: the man and the ‘shop’ situation. In this sentence the two nouns man and shop are preceded by the determiner a. This is the indefinite article and one of its functions is to signal new information that has not been mentioned previously. In the next sentence we have two more nouns shopkeeper and man (again). This time they are preceded by the determiner the, which is the definite article. Its function is to indicate information which has already been given and, therefore, to connect a series of sentences as being about the same thing. Thus, the shopkeeper is assumed to be the shopkeeper of the shop mentioned in the previous sentence, not another one round the corner, and the man is assumed to be the one who we have just been informed has walked into the shop, not one who was already in the shop, for example.

4.1 Why the Noun is not the Head of the DP

This suggests that there are two different empty determiners: one which is definite and the other indefinite. The interesting thing is that these empty determiners differ in other ways. The empty definite determiner takes only NP complements headed by proper nouns whereas the empty indefinite determiner takes only NP complements headed by plural nouns. This is perfectly normal behaviour for a head, as heads do place restrictions on their complements.

4.2.1 Determiners and Complements

As heads, determiners also project their properties to the phrase and so a plural indefinite determiner will head a plural indefinite DP. We can see this from the following observations:

4.2.1 Determiners and Complements

As we have pointed out, only indefinite DPs can appear in the post-verbal position in there sentences. Interestingly, in this construction the verb appears to agree with the post-verbal element. So in (36a) the post-verbal DP is indefinite, the sentence being grammatical, and the verb is in the plural form. The determiner some is an indefinite plural determiner and these properties are projected to the whole phrase. The determiner a is indefinite and singular and hence the DP that it heads can go in the post-verbal position of a there sentence and the verb will be in its singular form, as in (36b). The determiner the is definite, but unmarked for number. Therefore it cannot head a DP in the post-verbal position of a there sentence (36c), but it can trigger either singular or plural agreement on the verb when it sits in the canonical subject position, (36d) and (36e), depending on what NP it takes as a complement.